Alt Season

"Alt season" is the recurring late-cycle phenomenon where altcoins outperform Bitcoin in percentage terms for a few weeks or months. It typically happens after Bitcoin has already made a strong move and traders rotate into riskier assets looking for outsized returns.

The pattern, roughly:

1. Bitcoin doubles or triples first. New money enters the crypto space because of headlines about Bitcoin.
2. Bitcoin briefly consolidates near a local top.
3. Traders looking for the "next Bitcoin" rotate into altcoins. Ethereum gets the first wave; smaller-cap coins get the later, more violent moves.
4. Percentage gains for the loudest altcoins can be 5-10× over Bitcoin during the peak weeks of alt season.
5. The cycle ends. Bitcoin holds most of its gain; altcoins typically retrace 80-95% from their peaks.

What's reliably true about alt season:

• It feels obvious at the time. "This time the alts are different." They're usually not.
• A few altcoins survive each cycle as meaningful projects. Most don't.
• The percentage gains are real for the small minority who time it well. The percentage losses are real for the much larger majority who buy near the top.
• Bitcoin Dominance falls during alt season and recovers afterward. Watching dominance is one way to identify what cycle phase you're in.

The Bitcoiner take: alt season is essentially a wealth-transfer mechanism from later, less-informed buyers to earlier, better-informed sellers. The structural odds for the typical participant are bad. Anyone who's "doing it for the gains" should also recognize this is a casino, not an investment - which can be fine, if you treat it like one.

A more conservative path is to ignore alt season entirely and just keep stacking sats. It's less exciting and historically performs about the same or better, over enough cycles.